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My Mother (Winter Matriarch) always told me: "There are two sides to every story." I thought I understood that immediately. Right and Wrong. My Side and the Other Side. My side was Right and the other side was Wrong and those were the two sides to every story.

It was much later that I learned she had meant "Always consider the other person's point of view." Ah... "Mom, That's good!"

And so, as a tip of the cap to the Winter Matriarch, and as a toast to depth of understanding, no matter how delayed, I hereby open a thread with questions attached ...

Suppose you lived in Baghdad ... or maybe Mosul ... certainly not Fallujah... anyway, suppose you lived in Iraq. Would you vote in this election? How would you feel about it? And why?

With all due respect, I'd be bombing the bejeezus out of the occupying army, with faith that full life would follow. Someone comes into my town and holds a gun to my head and tells me to vote or be damned (or blown up), I'm going to try to kill him. I'm not stupid. Nor am I a hypocrite like the hypocrites and thugs and sell-outs on the "ballot."

The big problem is..... I heard that the Iraqis are being threatened if they don't vote. This happened last week. They were being forced to register.
All this and they are voting for American rulership.

Regardless of what you've heard, and I wouldn't doubt it for a second, it is important to note the nature of resilience. I was one of the biggest opponents of the Iraq War; I still think it was wrong, I don't have high hopes for our occupation over there, and I think it was very wrong to go about deconstructing the patriachy/theocracy over there via military force. This could have only been accomplished multilaterally, with the full support of the UN. If you are right in that people are being threatened if they don't vote, I believe they will show their resilience by not leaving their homes. I do not believe that is the case with the Shiite majority in Iraq... I think they will vote, and if they REALLY wanted to collaborate against us, they would be voting for a candidate which wasn't US-backed... Of course that can't happen either, since the majority of Iraqis don't know who else is running until the days before. Regardless, I think people will turn up to vote, to show that they want peace in Iraq, and that they want to stay united as a country. I don't believe that militant Islam, or even violence in general, is what the Iraqi people want. I would vote to have my country back, if I was an Iraqi... even if that meant having to deal with the Americans a while longer until the country could be secured.

On the other hand, I don't believe that "security" can or will be acheived.

Sorry, I don't vote for someone if I don't know who they are or what their platform is. And I certainly don't vote if someone breaks down the door of my house and says, "Vote, or else". I'm with Peg C.

You guys must not watch much boob tube. Your responses are those of a skeptical awareness.

My stance which is in agreement with the above comments is based on the history of Iraq, and especially on the modern history.

Iraq has been puppeted by the western world for decades. We should be ashamed to use the term democracy for what we are regurgitating upon them, and instead face the reality that it is plain old demockracy.

If I were an Iraqi I would tend not to vote there until the US and the Coalition of the Killing left, the Iraqi people were left alone, and they themselves put together a government election themselves.

I thought we had learned in Vietnam that democracy (like in Ukrainia) is a product of the actions of the citizenry. They must be more serious than for instance US citizens for it to work.

This election is pure bushit coverup of the real reasons for going there in the first place:

Domination of oil resources because the western world is too intellectually lazy to move toward ecologically sound energy resources.

All that being said, and in support of those who decided to vote there, I would demand an exit poll mechanism there so it could be shown that the gig was rigged like it was here.

With the Sunni boycott, Shias will most likely take power. So what happens then? Bush says our troops will leave if asked - anybody buying that one?

I have this image of al Jazeera showing video of banners and signs with "AMERICANS GO HOME!" plastered on the bombed out shell of every building, while CNN and FAUX news assure us that "Democracy has come to Iraq, and President Bush says American troops will stay to support President Allawi's mandate as long as they are needed"

Then we have the absurdity of trying to pretend there's a choice - Allawi promising to hold off on food rations for Iraqis who don't vote for him, vs 100+ unknown candidates - gee I wonder who will get the most votes?

Would I try to vote? No. As much as I believe in fighting the good fight, survival takes precedence, especially when choice is only an illusion. In all honesty, I'd have taken my child before the military on either side could find him, and headed deep into a cave somewhere far away long before now.

Today the New York Times published the names of all the candidates. By the time anyone read these names, the voting in Iraq was pretty much over on account of the 8-hour time difference.

This was no accident. The Times could have published the names a month ago. But "security" prevented it. It just so happens that security concerns coincided with the interests of the Bush administration, i.e., to make sure no candidate's platform was based on ridding Iraq of our occupying forces. That candidate would have drawn heavily from Iraq's "silent majority," who hated Saddam Hussein but hated our invasion more.

But Allawi, our own puppet, has to win. The election is about as honest as ours was, and less honest than the Ukraine's.

Oh how I remember the debates, Pushcat.
The hardest work of all was watching our fearless leader try to talk. A freaked out electrocuted space cadet fidgeting around the podium and trying to string together a few words to make a sentence. Awfully hard work.